w e l l ~ B L O G ~ t o ~ y o u ~ t o o !

05 April 2003
 
Long time, no blog, I know. Sorry. I actually had things to say on, like, Friday (which was yesterday) but I didn't get the chance to say anything? Why? Well the topic of the new blog.

Not that anyone might be worrying, because I don't know if it made national news, but yes, I am ok. There was a severe ice storm that hit Syracuse, indeed most of Central and Northern New York got hit, and the power went out yesterday. It flickered at like 5pm, went off for a bit, then came back on. And then at 7, it went out. Really out. Out out. Out for a long time out. Out for like 23 hours out. So luckily dinner had just finished cooking. Dad & I found some candles and some candle-holders and had them lit and had a candle-lit dinner. And the power was still out. Mom got home and the power was still out. I almost finished the New York Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle except for 7 squares, and the power was still out. I went to bed.

I woke up and the power was out. And it was cold. And dad was pissy. No power = no coffee. So, we got dressed (unbathed, mind you no power = no hot water), and set out at approximately 8:00am for 1) coffee 2)breakfast and 3)a generator: in the order that we came to said stores. The Home Depot nearest us was out of generators, and they knew from the number of times that they had been asked that there were no generators at any Home Depots in Syracuse. Makes sense.

So my mom calls her sister in Binghamton (2 hours south), and we get numbers for Lowes and Home Depot and another home store. And mom calls them and yes they have generators but they had sold 4 already that morning. So, we reserve one and turn south. Still no coffee/breakfast. We get about 45 minutes to an hour outside of Syracuse before we're sure there's power. And we stop at Denny's... Just as the entire Yale Women's Crew team is walking in. All 48 of them (with 3 coaches). They promptly fill up the entire non-smoking section. Now my dad recently went into a sever asthma attack from being in a smoking section too long, so sitting there was obviously out. The little vacous chickie asks "Is smoking all right?" and my dad says, "No," very firmly (no coffee, no breakfast yet. It's now 10:00) She's like "Smoking's not all right?" in a tone that showed that she was obviously confused by the fact that someone had a seating preference that wasn't just based on now wanting to smell like smoke. My dad (slightly pissier now) "No, Smoking is NOT all right." Waitress *looking at the filled up section and how the coaches took up the very last table even though there were seats amongst the girls*: "It'll be a minute."

We leave. We go to Friendly's instead (restaurant policy: 100% smoke-free). We have a pretty nice breakfast and get back on the road. We don't know where Lowe's is in Binghamton, so we stop at my Aunt Jo's. Hi Aunt Jo! We have some tea and coffee and sit and relax for a bit. We talk to my cousins (my cousin Martha plays Lacrosse in HS, and she scored a goal and her name was in the paper, just thought I'd mention that), and my Uncle Jim, catch up on life. Get directions to Lowe's.

Now if you read the little welcome paragraph, you will note the reference to Vestal. This came about because that's where I was for New Year's Eve. I've got a friend living there as well. It's not to far from Binghamton. Turns out that Lowe's is in Vestal. (dunno if it's there real sports mascot, but the Vestal Virgin's team cheer: Go Team! Score! But not with me!). We pass the nice Outback that we had dinner at NYE (very nice with call-ahead seating!), get into Lowe's and find our generator. It was the last one in the store. It had our name plastered on it! Go us! We also pick up some adapters we'd need and Carbon Monoxide detectors. Very important then, a family in the area had the mother and one son killed because they were running a generator and the carbon monoxide built up. The rest of the family survived but had to go to the hospital. Very dangerous.

So we get our generator and our other stuff and head on home. Now, on the way down, we passed a convoy of trucks heading North that was PPL. They were obviously trucks from a power comapny. My father guessed "Pennsylvania Power and Light". My mom preferred "Pennsylvania Power and 'Lectric". On the way up, we passed a convoy of trucks that was PGE I think. In know it was a P and an E. So, yeah, there were tons of power company people crawling around trying to get us up and running.

So we unload our generator and our neighbor "Neighbor Dave" came over and helped dad put the generator together. Neighbor Dave already had a generator. So we get it in the back, hook it up and get the furnace on. YAY! We use another plug to get our refridgerator on. YAY! We get the kitchen lights on. YAY! We only have so much gas, so Dad goes to get gas for the generator. Now it's supposed to be windy, cold and snowy tonight, so Mom and I build a little shelter from a ladder and tarp and lots of rocks. And we sit down and continue on our merry way. As we're washing dishes, all of a sudden, the generator putters out. The lights go out. The furnace goes off. We wait another few minutes. Dad gets back with gas, but we notice there are lights on.

NiMO has the power on! Yay! NiMO!

And that's my story.

I do have some cool pictures of my gargoule all iced over, and the trees bent over and such. And when the're downloaded from the camera to the computer, I'll post them. :)

So that's the end.

Oh yeah, and the Orangemen are in the Final Four tonight.

Liz the Mischievous renovated @ 19:56